Posted on August 9th, 2009 by John Schwenkler
This chapter begins with a discussion of the reciprocal relationships between rights and duties, arguing that the latter are necessary for the right ordering of the former, and indeed that the recognition of reciprocal duties provides “a more powerful incentive to action than the mere assertion of rights”. This is surely correct, and it seems [...]
Filed under: Caritas in Veritate, environment, morality, reading groups, religion
Posted on August 2nd, 2009 by John Schwenkler
The central themes of this chapter are the nature of gift and gratuitousness, and what it means to have a market economy – whether domestic or global – built on love and ordered toward integral human development. A helpful way to think about this challenge is in terms of the distinction drawn in sec. 36 [...]
Filed under: Caritas in Veritate, economics, government/law, morality, reading groups, religion
Posted on July 30th, 2009 by John Schwenkler
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry has a very sharp post up at the Scene that drives home a point I’ve been making for a while now. I agree entirely with his conclusion:
One of the reasons I don’t think of myself as a libertarian even though they’re the group whose actual policy preferences most closely mirror mine is because [...]
Filed under: economics, libertarianism, morality, taxation
Posted on July 27th, 2009 by John Schwenkler
Megan McArdle has a challenge for those opposed to the sale of bodily organs:
Justify driving organ sales to the black market, where the brokers get rich, the sellers get a pittance, and only the rich can afford them, rather than taking the money we currently spend on dialysis to compensate those who are willing to [...]
Filed under: morality
Posted on July 21st, 2009 by John Schwenkler
So Jesse Walker shares my discomfort with Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, but adds an esoteric twist:
That book is a common target, so much so that I have to wonder whether we’ve been missing the point of it all these years. Silverstein had a dark sensibility and a wicked sense of humor. Maybe he [...]
Filed under: media/culture, morality
Posted on July 14th, 2009 by John Schwenkler
A Dish reader objects that allowing people to sell their kidneys – as per Virginia Postrel’s thought-provoking Atlantic piece – might lead families facing foreclosure or struggling to feed their children to, well, sell their kidneys:
People are doing everything they can to stay in their homes, and/or to feed their children. I can only imagine [...]
Filed under: government/law, morality
Posted on July 7th, 2009 by John Schwenkler
I take on the question over at The American Scene.
Filed under: food, morality
Posted on June 24th, 2009 by JL Wall
by JL Wall
At first I wasn’t quite sure what Rod Dreher was aiming to do by calling out Eminem because a man thought he was quoting him while committing murder, but after several days, the discussion has led him into a key point about the role of art in modern culture:
No serious person believes that [...]
Filed under: media/culture, morality
Posted on June 4th, 2009 by John Schwenkler
With JL, let me heartily recommend my friend Helen Rittelmeyer’s initial sketch of a bioethics that “sees love, not autonomy, as the basis of human dignity”. It’s a challenging read, but well worth the work. Perhaps due to what I’ve been blogging about of late, this paragraph was probably my favorite:
There is a strong temptation [...]
Filed under: abortion, conservatism, morality
Posted on June 3rd, 2009 by John Schwenkler
Far-too-infrequent ObsidianWinger Sebastian has some good questions about the rhetoric surrounding the George Tiller murder. In the spirit of this post of hilzoy’s, however, it seems to me that an even better approach might be to ask whether, in the face of a series of violent attacks against the homes, property, and persons of UCLA [...]
Filed under: abortion, morality, politics, science/tech
